Talk about real estate bubbles.
A parking space just sold for $300,000 in Boston.
Today, a buyer paid $300,000 for a private parking space in Boston’s Back Bay section, making it the most expensive parking space in the city’s history, according to Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.
Seems excessive to me. I wonder why a parking space would be so expensive? If parking spaces command that high a price, I would expect some industrious person to build new parking accommodations to take advantage of the demand.
Though the price is more than what many people pay for a house, Sordillo said prime parking spaces in a neighborhood just a block from the Public Garden are in short supply.
“There’s only so many parking spaces in the city,” said Sordillo. “And in this part, there’s very few.”
In other words, artificial scarcity caused by misguided government policy.
As usual.
I’ll bet anything that parking accommodations are banned by zoning, why nobody has done it. Must be a “Historical District.”
Typical stupid yankee behavior. Does anyone understand economics up there?
Not that unusual (in Japan)… Friend of mine’s neighbor pay $2M for an apartment and an ADDITIONAL $168K for ONE parking space. Of course in Japan to buy a car, you must prove you have a parking space… sigh…
What is the misguided government policy, exactly? I am curious. And how is it misguided? Seems to me this is free market at work.
First, the buyer clearly placed a premium on the location, otherwise he/she would not have paid $300,000. That suggests the quality of living in the area supports such a price. Would you be willing to pay $300,000 for parking in an area that had no zoning laws, such that anyone could build a multi-story parking lot next door to your brownstone? Lax zoning laws would tend to devalue an exclusive area, as builders would come in and raze townhouses (including brownstones prevalent in Back Bay) and build multi-story high rises.
Are you suggesting the misguided policy is zoning or historic preservation?
If is is zoning, are all zoning laws bad, or just the ones that hinder what you want to do? What about zoning laws that prohibit your neighbor from tearing down his house and building a factory, gas station, apartment building, etc.? Are those laws bad?
Are all historic preservation laws bad? What about the ones that protected Faneuil Hall area, center city Philly, Georgetown DC, Old Town Alexandria, Colonial Williamsburg, etc. from being torn down and replaced with strip malls?
Again, I am just curious to know what the limits should be to zoning laws or historic preservation laws. Should we have the ability to build what we want, where we want, and when we want, without any controls?